Proliferation of license plate obscuring, and now anti-flash coatings

Submitted by Blecher_onthe_Hudson t3_zpwt2d in jerseycity

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/nyregion/license-plate-vigilantes.html?smid=url-share

I read this article today and it inspired me to post these pics I took last week of someone blocking my driveway. I was startled when the plate in the flash photo was unreadable! Clearly there's a coating on the plate to make flash photo by tolls fail. Unbelievable! I've seen lots of illegal plastic covers and heard about remote control covers, but this is really subtle.

https://preview.redd.it/u20f989qwv6a1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a2f33f7be8de80e45ed9650a6d719372107f8ee

https://preview.redd.it/yvmtf49qwv6a1.png?width=691&format=png&auto=webp&s=936748d648e01f65e46216633c8adccbe6fc81b2

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Comments

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BromioKalen t1_j0vu5es wrote

So you can afford the Tesla, but too cheap to pay tolls...

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Miringanes t1_j0yofkj wrote

There were a few people who parked in the garage who were too cheap to pay for the chargers so they used the 110v wall charger plugged into an outlet by a parking spot. Effectively stealing electricity.

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JCwhatimsayin t1_j0v2khc wrote

I wonder if that's an angle thing. I've definitely seen reflections like that from license plates before. But yeah, toll evaders are scum.

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson OP t1_j0v6q0f wrote

To shoot light back at the camera from an oblique angle like that requires a coating with cubic reflector nanobeads like are in reflective tape and cloth, they direct light back at it's source. If it were just the letters or the background, it might be readable, but in its entirety its not.

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kushNation141 t1_j0v7vza wrote

yea its for dbags to get over on tolls and speed cams. there are liners you can add to plate as well as sprays.

been out for years. they even have a special light that does somethign to cameras.

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boojieboy666 t1_j0x48d6 wrote

Wow how terrible, where would someone buy such a horrible thing? Do you have a link?

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doglywolf t1_j0wi5zw wrote

light is for the more advanced systems - the better systems use IR laser that is immune to those coatings or inserts but the light messes them up.

Only the highest of high end systems an defeat a high band IR light .

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson OP t1_j0w1jdg wrote

Looks like this is the stuff. https://photoblocker.com/ They claim it's not even illegal! So where does this lead? Facial recognition cams instead of plate cams? Then laws against wearing masks in your car? I remember a story from pre-covid where guy drove the cops in AZ nuts by driving with a mask on.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-traffic/2017/02/03/phoenix-speed-photo-cams-driver-wears-monkey-mask-racks-up-37-tickets/97447212/

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j0wmte5 wrote

You should see the camera resistant hats some thieves use. IIRC they’re IR led lights, which basically create a halo and block the face. You can find this crap online.

Most cameras can’t come close to filtering out the light so it looks like some 1960’s religious film and the Holy Spirit just broke it to steal a package…. Or some StarTrek alien bad guy.

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robin_tern t1_j0wtuqi wrote

I suspect it won't be long before they start embedding an rfid chip in license plates.

Robin.

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Anonymous1985388 t1_j0wyja2 wrote

I would expect that some sort of alarm gets triggered when a car goes through and a license plate does not get scanned. Should be enough time for police to look at the photo of the car whose license plate didn’t get properly read, and the car can get pulled over by police when they come out the other side of the tunnel. Though I don’t know how the technology works.

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doglywolf t1_j0wftfr wrote

Anti flash coatings don't work on high end tariff cams that use a special tech to read plates.

They do work on low grade IR based cameras like a lot of city level traffic cams but your messing with getting caught by the state or Feds to get away avoiding a few red light cams.

Most tolls don't use flash technology - the common 3 techs are High band IR or REG , regulars band IR with IR projector and flash .

Most highway level system use HD Nightvision conversion or High BAND REG - some new ones use Laser based color correction and Id but they are very high end.

​

These coating are more for running red lights in local towns with mostly use normal band IRL projection or flash .

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TheAmazinRayzin t1_j0w4kpt wrote

Fun fact: NJ is ranked #3 for most state collected road user fees by the National Motorists Association.

Hawaii is #1 and Delaware is #2

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson OP t1_j0w5s9a wrote

Not a shock, a 30 mi tpk trip is $9.33!

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Beautiful-Living-671 t1_j0yx9ul wrote

Pfft, that's nothing. The same distance on the main toll road near Toronto will cost you $27 Cdn, or about $20 US. But they have zero toll cheating there, likely due to strict enforcement.

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[deleted] t1_j0vomjz wrote

[deleted]

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JeromePowellAdmirer t1_j0wjnpk wrote

Guess what, you gotta pay for maintaining the roads one way or another. If your tolls don't pay for it it's my taxes and I don't even own a car so fuck that.

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[deleted] t1_j0wm0fd wrote

[deleted]

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j0wn2v8 wrote

We know you’re an idiot because the “tolls were supposed to be temporary to pay off the bridge/tunnel/highway” thing is a global old wives tail. There’s a small set of places where this was actually done. But literally every place on earth people claim this is fact.

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JeromePowellAdmirer t1_j0woe6u wrote

Yep, paying off the construction of a road is one thing but roads take significant amounts of further investment to maintain. They take exponentially more when they're in tunnel form and any work on them requires dealing with a mess of other cables and tunnels. There's no fair way to do it without user fees.

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flapjack212 t1_j0uzgls wrote

aren't traffic cameras illegal in nj anyway, sounds like this guy wasted his money...

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scubastefon t1_j0v01ag wrote

traffic cameras are illegal, toll gate cameras are completely legal. also sometimes people in one state drive to other states. and sometime those other states are okay with taking pictures of plates.

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Economy-Cupcake808 t1_j0v1h2h wrote

Fuck those other states tho.

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scubastefon t1_j0v36w2 wrote

I can’t, because sexual relations between a state and a man is strictly forbidden. It is written.

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